Almost Was... Always Is

The woman running the diner was tired. Not physically exhausted, but emotionally spent.

Things became difficult. It got tougher to hire reliable staff. The rent price went up. Old friends and old flames moved away… some moved so far away that they moved into the afterworld.

She keeps their thoughts and memories alive. The tributes in pictures of her parents and grandparents, scattered across the diner with their smiles attached to the determined grit of their faces.

With no children, and nieces and nephews far away, the diner is all she has left. It keeps her going. She feeds people and always will. A little rough around the edges, just one morning in her presence at the restaurant reminds us that in our own ways, we can all be a little rough around the edges.

The woman running the diner was almost a wife and mother. But she will always be a daughter, granddaughter, a niece, an aunt, a cousin, a woman, and a human being. And as long as she’s alive, she’ll see to it that nobody around her goes hungry.

(From Jeremy Gravilore’s Dimensions: Poems, Vignettes, and Flash Fiction)